


We're grateful and so strangely comforted

by thought



Series: All your dead unfinished selves [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alternate universe - canon divergent, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 03:33:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13941714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: "Oh. Great," Jacobi says, flatly. "I always wanted a puppy."





	We're grateful and so strangely comforted

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday fic for 14CombatGeishas.  
> Title from [Brianstorm](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GLlFnrhxQY)

2013

Lovelace joins the team in late July, but Kepler doesn't have her running missions independently in the field until October. He sends the three of them off with a jaunty wave, which is exactly as concerning as he probably intends it to be.

Jacobi wants Lovelace to fail, Maxwell can tell by the way he tells her exactly this, along with all of his reasons, about twenty times while they're waiting in line for coffee and doing surveillance and sitting in the car while Lovelace is outside filling the gas tank. Jacobi's weird about Lovelace-- from what she'd seen of their interactions before Lovelace joined their team the two of them had gotten along really well. Jacobi's got lots of acquaintances at Goddard but very few friends, and Maxwell had been pretty sure Lovelace fell into the latter category.

Yet as soon as Kepler brought her on to his team, Jacobi's been hostile-- sullen and petulant by turn; brushing off Lovelace's attempts at levity and honest conversation both; spending hours in Kepler's office with the door shut, their heads leaned together over the desk.

"Is it about the rank thing?" Maxwell had asked, stretched out on Jacobi's living room floor with a laptop on her stomach.

"Of course not." It had been a lie so obvious she didn't even bother calling him on it, but it was also clearly not the only issue at play.

Jacobi is, of course, a professional in the field-- or at least does his job in a way that ensures the mission is completed.

"I consulted on one of her team's ops earlier this year, actually right before you joined," he explains under the rattle of the slurpee machine at the gas station. "I ruined my favourite pair of jeans and probably my relationship, it was not a good time."

"Was it her fault?"

"I don't know," he says, grudgingly. "By the time we got out of the fucking ditch everything had been classified so high I don't even know if Kepler knew what was really going on. None of us did, that's for sure. If Lovelace knew anything they probably wiped it from her memory."

Maxwell frowns. "Can they do that?"

Jacobi just shrugs, which is not at all reassuring.

They get a group text from Kepler about ten minutes before they're set to hit the compound that is the primary target of their mission.

'I have a surprise for you when you get home'

"Well kids, make this mission a good one, it's always nice to go out on a high note," Lovelace says, fatalistically cheerful.

"Oh settle down," Jacobi mutters. "It's not like he's gonna kill us."

"Umm," says Maxwell.

Jacobi glances over at her, betrayed, but Maxwell doesn't trust Warren J Kepler as far as she can throw him (probably a lot further than she could have a few months ago, but still not far enough).

Forty minutes later, everything has gone to shit, because of course it has.

"I'm really looking forward to dying in shame," Maxwell says, resignedly, into her radio. When Lovelace responds, she can hear gunshots in the background.

"Maxwell," Lovelace says. "Do you have the shot?"

Maxwell, currently becoming intimately acquainted with a patch of thistles, attempting to rewire her broken tablet so she can track the truck that's about to leave with five tons of stolen high-grade Goddard brand explosives, and holding a hair tie between her teeth, makes a silently incredulous face.

"Negative, Captain," she says. "I do not have the shot. I also do not have a goddamn sniper qualification. Or the appropriate equipment to make a shot at this distance."

"You told me you're a sharpshooter."

"Yes! Sure! Which is not the same as a sniper!" She spits out the hair tie, resigning herself to working through a screen of tangled hair in her face.

"Sorry," Lovelace says, not sounding sorry at all. "I just figured if you're on Kepler's team it means the same thing. I've read your files. You all give a whole new meaning to the word over-achiever."

"Just, hang on a minute," Maxwell says, then switches her radio to her private channel with Jacobi. "Can you please either stop that truck or take Walters out of play?"

"You ask so much of me. I'm dealing with the truck already, but Lovelace isn't gonna like it. Actually, pretty much nobody's gonna like it, but I'm having a great time."

"Oh my God, what does the blast radius look like? I'm still outside."

"Why are you still here?!"

She shoves the tablet into her backpack and picks up her rifle. "At least tell me it'll deal with Walters, too."

"Not unless he's getting in to that truck. The fuse needs at least half a kilometer."

She sighs. "Does this mean I'm clear?"

"Uhhh," he says. "I mean, probably? But maybe kill Walters and then get the fuck out of here just in case. I'm about to head out through the North exit and hope nobody has really good aim."

"There is no north exit," Lovelace says. Maxwell jerks.

"Lovelace?"

"Yes. I, too, can change the channel on my radio, and you two aren't exactly subtle."

There's a flash of light from behind the main building.

"Now there's a north exit," Jacobi says, voice rough as he obviously starts running. Maxwell takes a quick look through the scope on her rifle just in case Lovelace is right and she can change the laws of physics with the power of her determination.

"I'm heading closer," she says.

"...Closer to the building that Jacobi's running the fuck away from," Lovelace says, flatly. "And thus closer to the upcoming fireworks-- which we're going to talk about, Jacobi, the secondary objective was to retrieve the stolen property, not use it to make a pretty light show."

"And how exactly did you see that happening?"

"I would have told you if you'd let me in on your plan."

Maxwell crawls on her belly through the scrub, feeling quite a lot like a little kid playing soldier as her hair and clothes tear on thorns and branches and Lovelace and Jacobi bicker in her ear. The truck pulls away, and luckily most of the guards are busy shooting at Jacobi or being dead. Walters is standing at the front of the building, talking into his radio. He obviously knows enough to want to keep an eye on the front while everyone else is distracted at the back, but he's still expecting their goal to be infiltration, not elimination. She gets close enough that the shot is a sure thing, and she doesn't even bother trying to stay in cover when she takes it, just pops up on her knees and fires before swinging the rifle over her shoulders and bolting back the way she'd come.

"Keep heading into the woods," Lovelace tells her. "I'm circling around to pick up Jacobi but I don't want both of you making yourselves easy targets in the giant empty field."

"Hey, I'd like to point out that I'm not actually dead, thank you," Jacobi says. "This field is treating me just fine."

"Just keep running," Lovelace says, resigned.

They do wind up completing the mission successfully, even if they don't actually manage to retrieve the explosives. Everyone who needs to be dead is dead, and all evidence of Goddard's involvement is erased. Jacobi sits in the back seat and sulks, texting furiously; Maxwell assumes he's either texting Kepler or Klein. Possibly both.

By unspoken agreement they take shifts driving so they don't have to stay at a hotel overnight. Maxwell and Lovelace make conversation that's not entirely as awkward as Maxwell is expecting it to be, even if Lovelace occasionally reminds her of a grown up version of a summer camp counselor or her high school riflery coach.

When they get back to the office they're all tired and stiff and grumpy, and definitely not ready to greet Kepler's surprise.

"Oh. Great," Jacobi says, flatly. "I always wanted a puppy."

"You can't be sarcastic if it's the truth," Maxwell tells him absently. They're both sitting on the desk in her office, handing a bag of chocolate covered coffee beans back and forth and silently judging the man standing beside Kepler. Or, well, a little behind Kepler, really, like he's subconsciously trying to shield himself from attack. His attempt at business casual screams '8:00 PM night before Walmart adventure', and he's clutching his coffee cup like he's scared it's going to try to escape.

"Mr. Eiffel will be joining the team as our Communications specialist," Kepler says, beaming aggressively.

"Because we definitely need one of those," Jacobi murmurs. Maxwell shoves a handful of coffee beans into his mouth, slides off the desk to offer her hand to Eiffel and promptly gets distracted by the list of errors on her computer screen that have been generated in the last two minutes of compilation.

"Dr. Maxwell is our AI specialist," Kepler says. "And Mr. Jacobi is a demolitions expert. Among other things."

"I keep telling you, you can't say it like _that_ ," Jacobi sighs.

"Nice to meet you?" Eiffel says, his voice almost squeaking on the last syllable.

"Ahahhaa, what the fuck do you mean 'syntax error', I don't think so," Maxwell says.

"Right," Eiffel says. Kepler clears his throat loudly, but Maxwell ignores him, staring intently at the line of code in front of her.

"My team are very dedicated to their work," Kepler says, finally.

"That's true," Jacobi says. "Things can get pretty intense. You sure you'll be able to handle it, Eiffel?"

"I mean... I guess we'll find out?" Eiffel says, uncertainly.

"We're going over to meet Isabel," Kepler says. "Dinner tonight, neither of you are picking the restaurant, I expect you both to be actual humans by then."

"Yes, sir," Maxwell responds automatically, then immediately deletes whatever Kepler had said from her memory. That's what she has Jacobi for.

*

By the time Kepler comes to retrieve them for dinner Jacobi has napped, they've both showered and changed into their Kepler-approved going into public clothes, and Jacobi has told her the few further facts he'd been able to glean about Douglas F. Eiffel from Kepler during his texting frenzy. They'd all found out the basics about Eiffel two weeks previous-- well, Jacobi had been told about him in confidence, which meant he had immediately told Maxwell, and Kepler had left Eiffel's file on Lovelace's desk under a pile of other files so that it had taken her three days before she'd found it.

"He found him in a jail," Jacobi says. "In Texas. I thought the Major had standards."

"I mean, he hired you, so..."

He elbows her in the side. They're sitting in the main lobby of the building that houses SI and Accounting, perched on the edge of the decorative fountain while streams of bored and exhausted looking math geeks trail out past them.

"Very funny," Jacobi says. "I don't even know why we need a communications specialist. We communicate just fine, and any tech issues we have you can solve."

"I mean, that's true," Maxwell says. "At least the second part. Obviously Kepler wants him for another reason."

"Well if he does he's not sharing," Jacobi mutters.

Maxwell just raises an eyebrow.

Kepler and Lovelace come out of the elevator flanking Eiffel, who still has that vaguely bemused, vaguely overwhelmed expression. It makes him look like an idiot, which pisses Maxwell off automatically.

"Hi, team," Kepler says, still dangerously cheerful. "Everybody ready for dinner?"

"Do we have a choice?" Jacobi asks.

"You always have a choice, Mr. Jacobi," Kepler says.

"If you mean do you have a choice that doesn't involve dying, probably not," Lovelace says, rolling her eyes at Kepler.

"Haha," Eiffel says, weakly.

They all exit the building in a cluster, but as soon as they're outside Jacobi increases his pace, heading towards the parking lot where Kepler parks with his hands shoved in his pockets. Maxwell starts to move to catch up with him, but Lovelace puts a hand on her upper arm, holding her back. Kepler frowns slightly and strides forward to walk beside Jacobi, far enough ahead that Maxwell can't hear what they're saying.

"This seems... awkward," Eiffel says. "I'm obviously missing something."

"You're missing a lot," Maxwell says, absently.

"You'll catch on," Lovelace reassures him. "Maxwell, did you finish your AAR?"

"Hmm?" Maxwell says.

Lovelace sighs. "Never mind. I'll ask Jacobi. Assuming he's speaking to me."

"I'm pretty sure you're off the hook, don't worry," Maxwell snorts.

"Yeah, I'm getting that."

"I get the impression Jacobi doesn't like me," Eiffel says.

"Jacobi is having a professional disagreement with Kepler about the form his team should take," Lovelace says. She's polite enough to Eiffel, but something feels a little off in the way she looks at him. Maxwell wonders if it's the incident with his daughter. Jacobi had pointed out that people would probably get weird about that sort of thing.

"And I'm assuming he thinks that form should be one without me," Eiffel sighs.

"And without me, if it makes you feel better," Lovelace offers. Maxwell smiles smugly.

"He liked me once we met," she says.

"Everyone is aware," Lovelace says dryly. Eiffel tilts his head, studying Maxwell and almost tripping over a curb as a result.

"So you and Jacobi..."

"...yes?"

"You're... together?"

"Ugh," Maxwell says, making a face. "That's disgusting."

"Sorry, sorry!" Eiffel holds up his hands. "Ok. Sooooo he's what, like your brother?"

Maxwell thinks about her brothers, and then she thinks about some of the situations she and Jacobi have found themselves in. "Not that, either."

"Don't bother trying to figure it out," Lovelace advises. "You'll learn by observation."

Maxwell gets the impression her comment is directed at both of them.

"Riiight," Eiffel says, tugging at the collar of his shirt uncomfortably.

By the time they get to the car Jacobi and Kepler are already in the front seat. Maxwell gets into the back behind Jacobi and pokes him hard in the shoulder, and then, when that doesn't get a reaction, she runs her hands through his hair the wrong way, making it stand straight up.

"This is fun," Eiffel says uncertainly, sliding in after Lovelace. "The whole... family car vibe. Team building, right?"

Maxwell tugs on Jacobi's ear.

"Right," says Kepler, pleased. "I'm glad someone appreciates it."

"It's not that we don't appreciate the team building," Jacobi says. Maxwell flips up the tag on the collar of his shirt. Lovelace is watching her, amused.

"Glad to hear it," Kepler says. "Like I always say, teamwork makes the dream work."

"He has never said that," Maxwell says, to Eiffel’s' vaguely nauseated face.

"Please never say it again, either," Jacobi says, and then "I swear to God, Alana," as she pinches the skin between his neck and shoulder.

Kepler says, "Have I ever told you about the time I worked as a makeup artist while they were filming the 2010 box office hit Inception?"

Jacobi turns on the radio. Eiffel frowns. "I liked that movie."

"You won't like the story," Maxwell advises him. Kepler reaches over and turns the radio back down, frowning darkly at Jacobi.

"Don't be rude, Daniel," he says, and Maxwell presses further back in her seat.

"Because that's the rudest thing either one of us have done today," Jacobi mutters.

"I have not, at any point, come anywhere close to rudeness," Kepler says. "Would you like me to start?"

"Oh I can think of a couple things," Jacobi says.

"Jacobi," Lovelace says, quietly. He bangs his head back against the headrest.

"Sorry, sir, please, continue with your fascinating story." It's blatantly insincere, but it's also not deliberately trying to get himself shot, so that's an improvement. Maxwell is surprised he's this pissed off about Eiffel-- trying to push Kepler to his breaking point is usually her unhealthy coping mechanism, Jacobi can use one of his own.

Kepler's story lasts the rest of the drive to the restaurant, and then Eiffel starts asking questions, which drags it out even longer. Lovelace is playing a game on her phone, while Jacobi sulks and Maxwell tries to irritate him out of it.

Dinner itself is painful. Maxwell is tucked in the far corner of a booth, directly across from Lovelace with Jacobi squished against her side, leaving a good two thirds of the booth for Eiffel, who is perched on the edge like he's ready to run away any second now. Kepler keeps making eye contact with Jacobi across the table and at one point Maxwell's pretty sure they have an entire argument with their eyebrows alone.

Kepler does his best to draw Eiffel into the conversation, and Lovelace does her best to make it seem less uncomfortably creepy than it is. Eiffel's obviously terrified of Kepler and trying to hide it, and Kepler's having a hard time not capitalizing on that for his own amusement. Or possibly to prove some kind of point to Jacobi, she's not sure.

Maxwell starts to hit the caffeine crash half way through the meal, and Lovelace gives her a vaguely alarmed look when she orders a triple espresso.

"Are you really sure you should..."

"Yes," Maxwell says, firmly. Lovelace leans back.

"My mistake."

Maxwell has built a tiny blockade out of condiments and glassware, the tension at the table is making her hands shaky and her throat hurt and she wants to disappear.

"Ok," Eiffel is saying. "But the second Back to the Future is kind of a disappointment, in comparison."

"I made a flying car once," Jacobi says, fondly. Lovelace grins.

"Yeah you did."

"Do you still have the pictures?"

Kepler rubs his temples. "Do you know how much paperwork that... incident resulted in?"

"Yes," Jacobi says, flatly.

"There would have been less if the intern's arm didn't need to be amputated," Maxwell says. "I saw the footage."

"Excuse me," Eiffel says. "I need to go smoke an entire pack of cigarettes."

"You scared him off," Lovelace tells Kepler as soon as Eiffel's out of earshot.

" _I'm_ the one who scared him off," Kepler says, arching his eyebrows at Jacobi.

"I'll start playing nice tomorrow," Jacobi says. "Just. Let me have this."

Maxwell's coffee comes and she drinks it all very fast. It burns her tongue and makes her stomach wobble unpleasantly.

"He's going to need someone to show him the ropes," Kepler says. "I'll be in meetings the rest of the week, so one of you needs to step up."

"Not it," Jacobi and Lovelace say in unison, because apparently everyone she works with is fucking three years old.

"Great," Maxwell says. "That's great. I am absolutely who you want training the new guy."

"Consider it professional development," Lovelace suggests.

Maxwell grabs her phone and clambers over Jacobi. "I'm going home," she says, needlessly.

None of them go after her, which she appreciates. The world feels like it's tilting gently back and forth as she walks outside into the omnipresent heat that is October in Florida. The sun has set, and the empty, dim silence of the parking lot is a relief. She pauses by the side of the building beside a flower box, kicking at gravel and a few dead leaves as she pulls up the rideshare app on her phone.

It's not a surprise when Eiffel comes around the corner to stand nearby. He smells like cigarette smoke but hasn't got one lit.

"Is it always like that?" he asks after about thirty seconds of silence.

Maxwell shrugs, not looking up from her phone. "Not in that way," she says, picking her words carefully. "But if you mean the Major-- he's gonna be pushing you for a while still. Until he knows you'll push yourself."

"So he never stops being terrifying."

"You stop being scared," she says. "At least I did. It doesn't mean he's changed."

"Oh good," Eiffel says. "That sounds healthy."

"We aren't being paid to have healthy relationships," she says, a little sharply.

"I mean, that is technically true, I guess. But like, there's unhealthy workplace culture and then there's... whatever the fuck that was."

"It's fine," she says. "Jacobi's being a child and Kepler's being an asshole. Nothing new."

"Kepler told me we have to trust each other for this to work."

"He's right."

"But I mean, you guys can't trust him."

She frowns. "Sure we can."

"Uhh, sure, until he snaps and murders us all."

"I trust Kepler to complete the mission," she says. "I trust that he will keep us safe."

"From himself, too?"

"This isn't a movie, Eiffel, he's our boss. So he has a bit of a temper."

Eiffel lights another cigarette. "And that wasn't an answer."

She watches her ride pull into the parking lot and doesn't invite Eiffel to join her when she gets in. He's still standing there, frowning down at the glowing orange tip of the cigarette when the car pulls away.

*

The next morning Eiffel shows up at her lab in jeans and a Star Wars tee-shirt, with dark circles under his eyes. "Kepler says I'm supposed to talk to you."

Maxwell, who had slept her way through a caffeine buzz and crash the night before and now feels like a towel that's been hung out to dry, says "First lesson. Coffee. Go away and don't come back until you've got some for me."

"Ha ha," he says, and then, when she doesn't react, "wait, seriously?"

Maxwell hasn't had time to stop by her office and the simple old-fashioned coffeepot she has plugged in on top of the filing cabinet, and all it takes is for one AI to irrationally hate you and suddenly the fancy digital coffeemakers in every lab will only produce decaf whenever you try to make coffee.

"Bye, Eiffel," she says, pointedly, and walks away.

He comes back twenty minutes later with two large mugs held aloft like trophies. Maxwell snatches the first from him, drains it, then takes the second.

"Hey! That was--"

"Good job," she says, wrapping both hands around the second mug and glaring over top of it until he drops his hand back to his side despondently.

"I think Major Kepler meant you should like, teach me about the job," he says, after twenty minutes of watching her work in silence.

Jacobi wanders in wearing sunglasses and smelling like chlorine. She's surprised. She'd figured he would have been too tired to drink the previous night, and still too irritated to go swimming with Lovelace before work. He looks almost relaxed, though if he took something for the hangover he could just as likely be very slightly stoned.

"I can't believe you both ditched us last night," he says in greeting.

"I can't believe you went and got drunk afterwards," Maxwell retorts. "Did you and Kepler..."

"No," he says, firmly. "No we did not. I fell asleep on Lovelace's couch."

"So you didn't actually have a choice about swimming, that makes more sense."

"I almost through up in the pool," he says, wryly.

Eiffel is suddenly fascinated by one of her monitors.

Jacobi goes over to the coffeemaker in the far corner, pulling down one of the recyclable paper cups and preemptively dumping five packets of sugar into it, glancing around surreptitiously to ensure no one else is watching. Eiffel jerks up as the coffee grinder starts up.

"Wait," he says, indignant. "Are you telling me there was a coffee machine right there the whole time?!"

"Always be aware of your environment," Maxwell says cheerfully. "Situational awareness is very important."

"I’m pretty aware of this situation," he grumbles, but he's shaking his head like he's amused.

Jacobi and Maxwell eventually set Eiffel up at a work station in the corner with the Respect in the Workplace training modules, and as soon as he's reluctantly engrossed in the introductory video they run away, going to hide in one of the explosives testing labs, where Maxwell watches Jacobi make things explode in a variety of pretty colours for the next three hours.

Each tiny explosion makes him grin large and uninhibited, and Maxwell thinks probably they're going to be ok.


End file.
